The Bluetooth™ Radio System is designed according to a “Specification of the Bluetooth™ System,” version 1.1, published Feb. 22, 2001 (“Bluetooth™ System Specification”) as a wireless cable replacement solution based on radio frequency (RF) technology, with emphasis on robustness and low cost. Implementations of Bluetooth™ are based on high performance, yet low cost, integrated radio transceivers. The nominal range required of these integrated radio transceivers is set to approximately 10 meters by the Bluetooth™ Radio System. In addition, the frequency assignment that is utilized by Bluetooth™ within the United States is within the same radio frequency range as 802.11 wireless LAN (local area network), high-end portable home telephones, medical devices, as well as microwave ovens.
Bluetooth™ is targeted at mobile and business users who need to establish a link or small network between their computers, cellular phones or other peripherals. In fact, a Bluetooth™ radio in a phone, PDA (personal digital assistant), headset, notebook computer or other device enables the various devices to communicate with each other. As a result, Bluetooth™ is gaining popularity as a wireless cable replacement technology. Moreover, Bluetooth™ provides a new market segment and devices to solve an age old problem of excessive number of wires for portable personal computers (PCs) and other mobile devices.
Accordingly, Bluetooth™ technology may be applied to various devices, such as computer peripherals, including keyboards, mice, headsets, microphones, as well as host systems such as personal computers, laptops and networks, in order to communicate with other Bluetooth™ enabled devices. As such, a Bluetooth™ enabled device may come in contact with various Bluetooth™ enabled devices. When such is the case, the Bluetooth™ device may desire to establish an audio link with each detected device.
Currently, the Bluetooth™ specification enables such one-to-one communication connections between Bluetooth™ devices. Unfortunately, the capability of utilizing a Bluetooth™ device to simultaneously receive voice/data streams from multiple device audio sources is limited to a small number of devices. Currently, a limited capability is supported as described by the Bluetooth™ Radio Specification. Therefore, there remains a need to overcome one or more of the limitations in the above-described existing art.